Civil rights groups sue Trump and Barr for use of teargas outside White House – as it happened

This live blog is now closing. You can follow our continuing coverage of the protests in our new live blog:

Donald Trump loves boasting about his polling numbers when they are great for him. He might not be so keen on some numbers that have just come out from ABC News.

For the second week since ABC News and Ipsos began polling on the coronavirus in mid-March, Trump’s approval for his stewardship over the nation’s response to the outbreak remains at a record low 39%. Six in 10 Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the virus.

The company also polled US adults on whether they viewed George Floyd’s death as an underlying racial injustice problem - and 74% of Americans polled did.

Writing for ABC News, Kendall Karson observes that:

This poll shows a more than 30-point increase in the belief that recent events reflect a broader issue over racial injustice from an ABC News/Washington Post poll from December 2014, four months after the shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year black man, by a white cop, and five months after the death of Eric Garner, a black man, who died after being put in a chokehold by a white officer.

It possibly bears out what Barack Obama was saying earlier this week - that the people on the streets protesting racial injustice have been more ethnically and racially diverse than previous bouts of civil rights demonstrations.

You can read the full details of the ABC News poll here: 74% of Americans view George Floyd’s death as an underlying racial injustice problem

Hydroxychloroquine is likely to be in the news agains today and it will be a surprise if Donald Trump doesn’t mention it at some point.

You may recall that Trump claimed he was taking it to ward off the coronavirus, despite at the time there being some warnings that it could actually be harmful. Then a major study in The Lancet suggested it was positively dangerous for Covid-19 patients, and experiments with using it to treat the new coronavirus were halted.

The Lancet has now withdrawn that study after a Guardian investigation - and we can expect a chorus of Hydroxychloroquine backers to restart their campaign to get it tried out on patients. James Heathers has written for us on how on earth this can have happened.

Peer review during a pandemic faces a brutal dilemma – the moral importance of releasing important information with planetary consequences quickly, versus the scientific importance of evaluating the presented work fully – while trying to recruit scientists, already busier than usual due to their disrupted lives, to review work for free. And, after this process is complete, publications face immediate scrutiny by a much larger group of engaged scientific readers than usual, who treat publications which affect the health of every living human being with the scrutiny they deserve.

Read more here: The Lancet has made one of the biggest retractions in modern history. How could this happen?

NFL players issued a powerful video statement overnight, which posed a challenge directly to the organisers to make a stronger explicit anti-racism message - and an apology for their past behaviour to players.

The video message posted on social media includes Saquon Barkley, Patrick Mahomes, Michael Thomas, Odell Beckham Jr and Ezekiel Elliott among others.

In the clip players take turns asking the question “What if I was George Floyd?”, and go on to name several black men and women who have recently been killed, including Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin.

They then tell the NFL that they want to hear the league condemn the systematic oppression of black people and admit they were wrong to silence the players’ peaceful protests.

The video also acts as a firm slap-down of Drew Brees, whose comments about NFL player protests have been described as both ignorant and dangerous.

The NFL, which of course prohibited players from taking a knee to protest police brutality, did put out an anti-racist statement on 30 May, dismissed as “trash” by Jacksonville Jaguars safety Peyton Thompson.

One of the stories that is likely to develop further as the US wakes up is the suspension without pay of two police officers in Buffalo, New York after they were caught on film pushing a 75-year-old man to the ground.

Buffalo mayor Byron Brown said he was “deeply distrubed” by the video and New York state governor Andrew Cuomo said the incident was “wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful”

You can see the incident in this video clip - be warned you may find it distressing.

The 75-year old man is reported to be in a stable but serious condition.

The tenth night of protests and grief over the death of George Floyd continues to produce some strong images from the US and around the world. Here are a selection of some of the most striking from the last few hours.

My colleagues on the sport desk have this morning published an open letter about racism to Donald Trump from former footballer Liam Rosenior, in which he thanks the US president for being so blatant in his attitude, in a way that presidents who came before him weren’t

These problems have been here throughout my lifetime and generations before me, and as a black man my biggest pain, anguish and dejection has come not only by witnessing these atrocities committed repeatedly against my people, but actually the lack of shock and vivid desensitisation built up over the years while hearing (and sadly believing) that “things won’t change”.

Before you, we had presidents who turned a blind eye to this, who didn’t do nearly enough and were too busy working to fulfil the wishes of corrupt corporations who had lobbied them into power. The difference is they were media savvy and clever enough to say the right thing in public and show just enough fake sympathy in response to these human rights violations to pacify the growing numbers of people who inherently knew there had to be change.

You can read it in full here: This is just the beginning, I promise you: an open letter to Donald Trump

While work continues on beefing up the security around the White House, Donald Trump will be out and about today with a planned visit to rural Maine.

It is his first trip to Maine since taking office, and he is scheduled to visit Guilford, where he will be visiting Puritan Medical Products, one of only two major companies producing a special type of swab needed to ramp up coronavirus testing.

The Trump administration is providing $75.5 million through the Defense Production Act for Puritan to double production to 40 million swabs a month, and the company plans to open a second production site by July 1.

Trump is also scheduled to meet with members of the commercial fishing industry.

He’ll be flying in to Bangor, where he is also likely to encounter protest.

And the local political ground isn’t perhaps as welcoming as the president might hope - all four members of Maine’s congressional delegation, including Republican Senator Susan Collins, have been critical of Trump’s actions this week. Earlier this week she called his church and bible photo opportunity “unsympathetic” and “insensitive”.

Marie Follayttar, director of Mainers for Accountable Leadership, which is helping organise the demonstration today, simple says “It’s not the right time for him to be coming to our state.”

There will inevitably be a huge focus on what happens now with the Minneapolis police force. Associated Press reporters Tammy Webber and Amy Forliti have been looking at the challenges faced by Medaria Arradondo, the city’s first African American police chief.

In his 2017 swearing-in ceremony he spoke of restoring trust. But George Floyd’s death has raised questions about whether Arradondo — or any chief — can fix the department. The city’s own data going back to 2015 shows that when police officers use force, 60% of the time the person they’re dealing with is black, though only 20% of the population is black.

“I think the chief’s heart is in the right place,” City Council member Steve Fletcher said. “But I don’t think this department was ever going to let him get there. I think people understand he was in an impossible situation.”

Fletcher argues that Arradondo was too lenient with discipline in his first year as chief as he worked to build department morale, which made getting rid of problem officers difficult later.

Arradondo’s predecessor, Janee Harteau, was forced out over the fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond. She said she received push-back from the union when she was trying to implement reforms and this week she called on police union President Lt. Bob Kroll to resign after his controversial comments.

The Minnesota Department of Human Rights filed civil rights charges related to Floyd’s death and will investigate the Minneapolis Police Department to determine if it has engaged in discriminatory practices, Governor Tim Walz said this week.

Fletcher said he wants to examine whether the police department should be disbanded, saying he believes it’s “so broken it can’t be fixed.”

“I think we need to rebuild from the ground up,” said Fletcher, vice chair of the city’s public safety committee.

Bob Bennett, an attorney who said he has sued the department “hundreds” of times over police misconduct allegations, said Arradondo probably did the best he could, but the union has more sway than chiefs do over police conduct.

“I know he wants to reform the department as much as anyone I’ve ever met or seen,” Bennett said. “Hopefully this whole mess will bring about some change.”

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today.

Thank you so much to those of you who got in touch on Twitter. Before I go – this video was taken earlier this week, but because it’s Friday: here are protestors singing along to Tupac’s 1992 song “Changes” at the George Floyd protest all the way in Aotearoa (the Māori name for New Zealand):